After a 2005-06 roster that sported just eight players, Georgetown happily welcomes new blood ” both freshmen and transfers ” to revitalize the Hoya court this winter.

‘What all of the freshmen and newcomers have brought to our older kids ‘ is an attitude of excitement,’Georgetown Head Coach Terri Williams-Flournoy says. ‘They’ve brought a new level of competition.’/p>

Two players stood out in Williams-Flournoy’s mind to potentially make an immediate impact for the Hoyas. ‘Probably Shanice Fuller and Aminata Diop will make an impact right away,’she says.

Junior center Aminata Diop’s 6-foot-5 presence and physical play make her a formidable opponent. Diop, who started playing basketball at age 17, averages 10.5 points and 8.9 rebounds during her two seasons at Southeastern Illinois, a junior college and led the Lady Flacons to a top-five national ranking in 2005-06. Diop was named all-Great Rivers Athletic Conference after helping Southeastern Illinois to its third-straight region title. She was a member of the Senegalese junior national team in 2000-01, helping lead the team to a silver medal at the under-20 African Cup, and a member of the Senegalese senior national team from 2001-06.

Freshman Shanice Fuller is a 5-foot-8 combo guard from Chesapeake, Va., who shares the same high school as former Georgetown men’s basketball standout Alonzo ourning (COL ’92). She was named Southeastern District Player of the Year in 2006 and helped lead the Indian River High Braves to their fifth consecutive district regular-season title, four straight district championships and a regional championship. Fuller was rated ‘Best Player’and ‘Best Defender’in the Virginian Pilot’s pre-season poll prior to her senior season.

‘Shanice is probably your kind of playmaker-type point guard,’Williams-Flournoy says. ‘She didn’t have a very good high school team, but she made her high school team look very good. Her passes, the set-up, the playmaking of it. She’s that type of point guard.’/p>

Two other freshmen will join Fuller in the backcourt. Guard Kenya Kirkland averaged 11 points, seven rebounds and seven assists as a senior at Grand Street Campus in Brooklyn, N.Y. She was named all-City first team, all-Brooklyn first team and was nominated to Player of the Year by the Daily News. Her junior year she averaged 11 assists per game, setting a new public school record for total assists and for assists per game.

‘She’s quick; she’s athletic,’Williams-Flournoy says about Kirkland. ‘She’s a great defensive player. I think you’re gonna see a lot of her defensive ability out there this year.’/p>

Shooting guard Meredith Cox broke Delone Catholic High School’s (Pa.) scoring record with an astounding 2,097 career points. She played AAU ball for the Philadelphia Belles ” for which senior guard Kate Carlin, Bethany LeSueur (MSB ’06) and Mary Lisicky (MSB ’05) also played ” for seven years, earning two trips to the national finals.

‘[Cox] has come from a great AAU program, so a lot of the kids that she’ll be playing are the same ones she’s competed against in AAU,’Williams-Flournoy says. ‘She comes in being able to compete, a great outside shooter and just a kid that plays hard.’/p>

Forward Zhondria Benn ranked as the No. 2 power forward in the Washington, D.C. metro area as a senior at Western High School (Md.), and for averaging 14.4 points and 16.7 rebounds she was named first team all-Metro and Baltimore City Player of the Year. She was also a McDonald’s all-American nominee.

Williams-Flournoy describes Benn as a ‘blue collar worker.’/p>

‘It’s nothing fancy,’she says. ‘You’ll see her sneaking in getting rebounds, she’s playing defense, she’s just working.’/p>

Left-handed forward Jaleesa Butler is a 6-foot freshman who can leap. She played her senior season at Alton High School (Mo.), where she averaged 18 points, five rebounds and 3.5 steals. Butler was named first team all-Conference after helping lead Alton High School to the District Finals.

Junior transfer Krystle Hatton, who will not play this year, is a 6-foot-2 forward from St. Louis, Mo. In her second year of playing for St. Louis, she averaged 4.6 points and 5.5 rebounds.

‘She brings in some size for our post players to compete against [in practice] every day, so that helps,’Williams-Flournoy says. ‘Competition in practice is always good. It gets everybody better.’/p>

Williams-Flournoy hopes the new players will immediately impact the standings.

‘The freshman class brings in a little more athleticism to our program, which helps in the Big East. They just all have something different about them,’she says. ‘We’ve got a shooter, we’ve got a playmaker, we’ve got a defensive player, we’ve got a rebounder ” it’s a little bit like they put their own little team together. We’ve actually got every position covered in that group that’s coming in.’/p>

The upperclassmen share their coach’s sentiment.

‘It’s nice to have some fresh blood into the system, and they’re all very excited to get playing,’junior guard Kristin Heidloff says.

‘Even though we’re about split as far as newcomers and returning players, I think that it will be very hard to see on the floor who’s an upperclassmen, who’s an underclassman,’she continues. ‘We’ve mixed really well.’/p>